


Let the stars fall

by happywhiskers



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, M/M, Medieval AU, Slow Build, child!cas (brief), eventual love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7468017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happywhiskers/pseuds/happywhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is a young boy who is fascinated by the stars. He sneaks out of his village and away from his family every night to visit them, making up wild stories and adventures for the constellations that he adores so much. He loves them so much that when he is offered the chance to live with the stars, he accepts it. However, he soon grows bored of living in the night sky, and longs to return to Earth. When he does, things have changed for Castiel, and everything is different in ways that he couldn't possibly imagine before.</p><p>Set in a medieval Alternate Universe semi-based on the setting of Merlin</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the stars fall

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> If you do take the time to read this, thank you very much. This is very different to the kind of things that I usually like to write, but I was sent this idea as a prompt by a very kind individual, and it got my me thinking very hard about it. I've come up with a story line that I really like, and I hope that you will all like it too.  
> This is going to be VERY slow build for Destiel stuff, but, if you're all interested in reading more of this, it will come. Eventually. I promise.

A young boy stumbled as he padded through a grass meadow on small, bare feet. It was dark, and he, regrettably, had no form of lighting with him. The long stems came up to his knees, making it hard for him to walk. But he managed it; he’d come this way many times before. He imagined that the grass stems were like guards, trying to get him to return home, but he crushed them down. He was the strongest warrior in his village – he wasn’t afraid of some grass.

The boy turned slightly, looking back over his thin shoulder and behind him, pausing in his stride. His village wasn’t far behind him, just on the other side of the meadow. There were no candles in the houses’ windows and silence filled the air – everyone was asleep, even the animals, bar from tonight’s watchman. He would be wandering through the small village, checking that there were no intruders, thieves or other disturbances. He wasn’t very good at his job – the boy managed to sneak past him every single night. He smiled to himself, feeling very proud of his accomplishments, before turning his back on the village again and beginning to plough through the meadow once more.

Once he was out of the tall grass, there was a small bank, which he ran down giddily, making sure that he stopped in plenty of time before the river. He’d fallen in once, and his father had not been pleased when he’d arrived home, soaking wet. The boy had found it very difficult to talk his way out of that one – he wasn’t an excellent liar.

Just like he did every night, the boy wandered the last few paces over to the river and sat down. On a warmer night, he would throw his legs over the bank and trail his feet in the river. Tonight, however, there was a chill setting in – harvest was approaching quickly, and then winter would be upon his village. This meant months of hardship for the young boy and his family, and was not something that he was looking forwards to. Winter brought pain and weakness to all, whether it be through its biting cold or its relentless attack on food supplies – winter brought death to the village. The boy had not experienced many winters in his short lifetime, but he had lived through enough to know that they were to be feared.

The boy lay back on the ground, feeling the patchy and stubbly grass poke at his back through his thin clothing. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and gazed up at the sky sprawling out above him. That was why he was here; why he had snuck out of his home and away from his family; why came to the same place every single night. He came to look at the stars.

From a very early age, the young boy had been obsessed with the night sky. He didn’t know what it was about it, but something drew him to it. At first, he’d simply stayed up as late as his father would let him to see the stars beginning to peek out from wherever they hid during the daytime when the sun had set. Then, he’d started pretending to be asleep until everyone else had settled down, and then gone to the window and quietly opened the shutter, gazing at them from there. Eventually, after being caught and scolded several times, he’d ended up sneaking out at night. This had begun in the early spring of this year, and he’d kept it up every single night without fail – he’d discovered the river and the beauty of his current favourite spot in the late of the spring.

The boy gazed upwards, unadulterated awe filling his expression. The stars were as breathtakingly beautiful as they were every night. They were bright pinpricks of pure light against the inky black of the sky. There were no clouds that night, and the boy was able to appreciate them in all their glory. The moon was a crescent, and it hung proudly amongst the stars, but the boy had no love for the moon. The moon came and went as it pleased, waned and waxed. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t. It was unreliable. But the stars were always there for the boy. They moved from night to night, yes, but they were still there for him. They never went far, and there were always some there, taking the place of others as they dipped progressively lower and lower with each night to be swallowed by the horizon. Sometimes it would be too cloudy for him to see the stars, but he knew that they were there still. They were always there.

The boy smiled as he spotted and recognised constellations that his father had taught him long ago, in happier times. He searched them out and whispered their names softly, barely loud enough to be heard over the babbling of the river next to him as the water flowed idly by. Then, when he ran out of ones that he knew, he made up his own constellations. He gathered groups of stars in his mind, named them and made up stories and adventures for them. There was a boy who was missing a leg due to a hunt one day where he had encountered a huge bear. Another group of stars formed a dog who travelled across the lands, kindly giving medicines to the elderly and the sick, healing them instantly. To the dog’s far left was a huge, beautiful castle that was filled with knights and guards and barons and all sort of other important people. It also had a king and a queen and princes and princesses who loved their people and gave them lots of food and money, unlike the king who ruled over the land that the boy’s village was situated in.

All of these stories were whispered aloud as the boy’s gaze raked over the dark sky. It was cold, and the wind nipped at him through his clothing, but he barely noticed it – the stars and their stories kept him feeling warm inside.

Eventually, his fingers went numb and he ran out of stories for the night. It was a little while after that when the boy got up and turned his back on the river and the stars for the night. He walked back through the meadow, slipped under the tall fence that surrounded his village and crawled through the window into his family’s house. Fortunately, they were all asleep. The boy quietly crept over to the bed that he shared with his brother and snuggled down under the thin, scratchy blanket, being careful not to move too much and disturb his slumbering sibling. He rested his head on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling of his house, imagining that the stars were there as they had been by the river, always watching over him. Always protecting him. He fell asleep not long after.

* * *

 

Harvest came and went, and the boy was almost too tired to visit the stars and the river every night. His father had him out and working on the fields from early in the morning to late at night, barely giving him time to stop and rest and eat, insisting that the village must be put before his own needs. He seemed to forget how young the boy and his siblings were. Despite the fatigue set deep in his bones, the boy always managed to drag himself away from his bed and away from the village at night. The stars called to him silently, and he answered their calls. He would never betray a friend.

Winter settled over the village, and it was the coldest that anyone could remember. The boy watched his family and friends struggle as they rationed what little food that they had. One of his brothers died early on from the cold, the same one that the boy had shared his bed with for as long as he could remember. He watched his family weep, but the boy had no reason to cry. He knew exactly where his brother had been taken to – the stars would have let him in as one of their own. The boy looked for him the next night, and, sure enough, he saw his brother’s face smiling down at him through a constellation of five stars. The boy knew that his brother was happy now.

As the winter dragged on, the air only grew colder. Snow fell thickly from heavy clouds, and frost covered the trees and houses every night, freezing the boy’s blanket and face. His body grew progressively colder over just a few days, just as his brother’s had done not long ago, and he felt the life beginning to leave him. Yet, he still managed to go to the river and to visit the stars and his brother. Without the stars, he had nothing.

On one such night, the boy lay on the frozen river bank as he always had done. There was no snow that night, and the sky was crystal clear. His body was barely functioning, and his mind was close to giving up, but that was alright. The boy felt at peace – he would join the stars, like his brother had done. He would finally be happy, just like his brother.

The young boy felt a great thirst come over him, and he dragged himself over to the river, leaning over to lift water from its icy depths and to bring it to his parched lips. He thanked the stars that it wasn’t frozen. As he drank, the boy saw his reflection, lit up by the light of a full moon. He saw a thin, pale, pinched face underneath a tangled mess of dark hair. Blue eyes stared lifelessly back at him from within sunken sockets. The boy knew that he was looking at himself, and that he was ill. But he’d already known that – all he had to do now was to wait for the stars to claim him.

As he drank, the boy felt himself grow drowsier, and his eyes started to close. He thought that it must be his time, and he didn’t try to fight it. He wouldn’t rather be in any other place – the stars would be able to claim him easier from here. He would die in the place where he’d always been at his happiest, and amongst friends: the stars and the river had always been more of a friend to him than anyone else in the world. He rolled away from the river and his blue eyes shut tightly. He didn’t open them again for a very long time.

* * *

 

_Around him was pure darkness. He was shrouded in the intense black of the sky that the stars had hung from every night that he'd visited them. The boy didn’t feel the deep coldness of before, nor the thirst, nor the exhaustion. He felt nothing. He couldn’t look up, down, nor around him. He wasn’t there, and yet he was at the same time._

_Then, from all around him, he heard voices, accompanied with the sensation of a light breeze brushing all over his body, even though his body wasn’t there. The voices spoke together as one, all coming together to form an awe-inspiring crescendo in a rich variety of volumes, pitches and tones. They felt like silk in the boy’s ear, and though he couldn’t make out what they were saying, he was filled him with a great calmness._

_“Am I dead?” he wondered aloud, curious as to why he wasn’t a constellation of stars now, like his brother. Why was he not looking down on the river and the meadow and the village?_

_“No, Castiel, not yet, but you will be soon,” came the reply, followed by a pause. The boy waited for their voices to sound again, longing to hear them. They were like nothing he’d ever heard before. “You can join us, Castiel. Give us your body, and you can become like us. You will no longer feel pain nor emotion; you will be free.”_

_“Does that mean I’ll die?” the boy asked, his voice sounding rough in comparison to the sweet tones of the others around him. He wasn’t afraid._

_“No, you will be neither alive nor dead, and you will no longer be human. You will be free, with us, amongst the stars.”_

_The boy felt excitement fill him. He could live with the stars – this was even better than becoming the stars! He could be with them, always. He didn’t care about leaving behind his body and his family. He’d never enjoyed living in the small village that he’d been born into, controlled by his father and the rest of the people. He’d wanted to be free, and he had now been promised that freedom that he’d always craved. He was in charge of his life, not them. He wouldn’t miss them. “I want to join you.”_

_“You will willingly give up your body and your life for your soul to become one of us?” The question came from all around him in that beautiful, alluring manner that had so captivated the young boy._

_“I will.”_

_“Very well, young Castiel.”_

_And Castiel was freed._

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE leave kudos and comments if you want to read more, because I won't know otherwise. Constructive criticism is also very much welcomed.  
> Thanks so much for reading! x


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